Biting at a play centre - WWYD?

At one stage, my friend's DS came back to the table with DS1, who was crying - having been bitten by a stranger (a child, perhaps 5yo).

The bit was deep enough to bruise, but not bleed, and was apparently unprovoked.

I went with my DS to go and see whether the parents were about, but the child would not say who their parents/adults were, and I wasn't going to press it. Another few parents came up to me to see if DS1 was ok - they said they'd seen it, and it had been a very nasty bite, but they didn't know who the parents were either - though they encouraged me to find out, because they would want to know if it had been their child.

Other than pressing for the child to tell me (which I wasn't prepared to do: I had asked the child twice to take me to their parents, or to show me where they were, and both times he confirmed that his parents were there, but he refused to show me or take me to them - he was acting cheeky rather than defiant or scared, and as I had DS1 with me, I suspect he knew precisely what I wanted to see his parents about) or to randomly start asking whether their child was wearing an X coloured top, and had they bitten my child (and there were a lot of grown ups there - the play centre was pretty busy) ...

And even then: what outcome would I expect? For my DS, or for them?

If someone came up to me and said that my child had done that to theirs, I would expect my child to apologise - and they would. They both tend to express genuine remorse when they realise they have hurt someone, physically or emotionally.

But in terms of biting a stranger, either it's something that they do a fair bit (in which case, the parents will probably have been aware of it, and assumedly are already trying to help their child to stop doing) or it's an anomaly (in which case, what would I expect the parents to do?)

Re: Biting at a play centre - WWYD?

At one stage, my friend's DS came back to the table with DS1, who was crying - having been bitten by a stranger (a child, perhaps 5yo).

The bit was deep enough to bruise, but not bleed, and was apparently unprovoked.

I went with my DS to go and see whether the parents were about, but the child would not say who their parents/adults were, and I wasn't going to press it. Another few parents came up to me to see if DS1 was ok - they said they'd seen it, and it had been a very nasty bite, but they didn't know who the parents were either - though they encouraged me to find out, because they would want to know if it had been their child.

Other than pressing for the child to tell me (which I wasn't prepared to do: I had asked the child twice to take me to their parents, or to show me where they were, and both times he confirmed that his parents were there, but he refused to show me or take me to them - he was acting cheeky rather than defiant or scared, and as I had DS1 with me, I suspect he knew precisely what I wanted to see his parents about) or to randomly start asking whether their child was wearing an X coloured top, and had they bitten my child (and there were a lot of grown ups there - the play centre was pretty busy) ...

And even then: what outcome would I expect? For my DS, or for them?

If someone came up to me and said that my child had done that to theirs, I would expect my child to apologise - and they would. They both tend to express genuine remorse when they realise they have hurt someone, physically or emotionally.

But in terms of biting a stranger, either it's something that they do a fair bit (in which case, the parents will probably have been aware of it, and assumedly are already trying to help their child to stop doing) or it's an anomaly (in which case, what would I expect the parents to do?)

So what would you do? And why?

You could tell a staff member. My sister took a friend's kids to a playcentre, and they ended up being kicked out because one of them bit 3 different kids. You don't know if it's a first offence, so let the staff deal with it.